


Wait For Me

by Lutte



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M, Suicide, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lutte/pseuds/Lutte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Wait for me."</p><p>That was the note he left behind, and it was all that kept me going until now. </p><p>(From Jean's POV - after the events of Chapter 53)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wait For Me

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during and after the events in Chapter 53 of the SnK manga. If you have not yet read it, please be aware that there are general spoilers to the current plot.

“Jean, don’t look.”

How could I not? When it was my mouth that had gotten us into this shitfest, how could he possibly expect me to look away? And why would I? I may have started out my life as a gutless ass, but I wasn’t going to let it end that way. Like hell was I going to let him die alone in this place while I stared off like some coward who was too afraid to face the truth. No. I wouldn’t do that to him. I would be here for him until his final breath. I would be the last one to see his eyes the way they were now, alive and blue and filled with more terror than I could bring myself to feel. 

Because why should I be scared now? 

It was all going to be over soon, and part of me saw relief in that. Not that I was happy to die. I was pissed off that it would be at the hands of some filthy human instead of the mouth of a titan like I expected. I was even more upset to know that Armin would be brought down along with me. Before me, even – but that made sense, didn’t it? I was doomed to watch the men I love die in front of my eyes.

I flinched as the visage of my best friend and lover swamped my mind in a way that was both unwelcome and desperately needed. 

Marco.

It had been so long since I allowed myself to remember his face. His memory had been a constant in the back of my mind, but rarely had I been so masochistic that I brought his actual image to the front. It didn’t take long after his death for me to realize that I couldn’t handle such a thing. Even still, I tried to picture those freckled cheeks every now and then. 

The only thing more terrifying than remembering was forgetting. 

Armin’s piercing cry drew me out of my memories and back into the room. There were tears streaming down his cheeks, which were normally so pale but were now flushed red from a fruitless struggle. I had tried to fight my way free in the beginning, but once they realized I wasn’t Eren and was of little threat they decided to break my wrists to prevent any escape. 

They hadn’t bothered to do the same with Armin because they labeled him as weak from the start. Normally it would have been their mistake, but in this situation there was no way that even Armin’s mind could save us. Now that they knew we had tricked them, there was nothing left to do but torture us for information and then finally kill us. In that time, Armin had become a plaything to them and they had gotten a sick enjoyment out of watching him struggle. 

And that was before they brought out the knives.

I felt my stomach turn as a red line wept free of Armin’s skin and rolled down the pale column of his throat. The tip of the dagger was twisting slowly in the little hole it had created, slowly but surely digging a larger one in its place. The only sounds in the room were the pained screams of Armin and the sick, satisfied grunts of the men. I wanted to kill them all, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t even distract them away from him.

I attempted, of course, when they first turned their attention on him. And it had worked for a little while, until they realized that it hurt me more to hurt him. I’m not sure how they realized our connection, although I’m sure it was something I said. I had tried to offer every comforting word I could think of to sooth him, but none of it mattered now. 

Armin wailed and I felt myself lurch forward, my body wanting nothing more than to get across the room to the only man that mattered in my life now. After I had lost Marco, I thought I would never care for anyone again but then there he was. That little blonde somehow worked his way into my mind and heart to the point that I almost felt alive again. And even if he would never compare to Marco in my heart, I actually wanted to fight again. If it meant living each day by his side, I wanted to go on.

“Please, just let him go!” I felt the words tear out of my throat in a bellowing scream, but I may as well have said nothing. The only reaction I got was their lips twisting into smiles that were somehow colder than before. They wanted this reaction.

Armin screamed again and I jerked forward, tugging on my wrists with the rope restraints. The room disappeared as my vision went white with pain and my stomach jerked with the uncontrollable urge to be sick. I hung my head as I fought back the urge to wretch, my shoulders trembling with the effort. We were never going to get out of here, and I knew that. I had resigned myself to die, I had. But every time I heard him scream, I wanted to fight. 

“Armin,” I breathed through the pain and nausea, “Don’t. Don’t let them have your screams. Don’t give them that.”

Armin stared at me for a long moment and then resolve colored his features, his filling with determination as he gave a short, stern nod. I could see his jaw tightening as he set his teeth together, preparing himself to fight back against the pain that was sure to come. I felt a small smile tug at the corner of my lips, my heart aching with the need to take my strong, beautiful blonde into my arms. One more time. Just once more before I lost him. 

“Well, it’s not fun anymore if he’s not going to scream.” 

The man shrugged and then jerked his arm quickly, and for a brief moment in time I thought that he had actually released him. But the strangled, gurgling sounds coming from Armin’s throat marred the dream I had and left me with nothing but a red waterfall. I watched those beautiful blue eyes widen with fear and confusion as his life spilled out of the slit in his throat. All of the color that had been in his cheeks vanished and left me staring at the ghostly shell of the man that had brought me back from the dead.

“Ar…” I tried to say the name, but everything in my body rejected it. My throat closed up and my vision blurred to the point that I couldn’t see anything anymore. Not that I wanted to. The last thing that I wanted was gone now, and he had taken me with him. 

There was a sharp rattling on the floor as my chair shook, my body trembling uncontrollably as I tried to keep a hold on my sanity. But there was no way of doing that when there was so much noise around me. Wild, violent screaming mixed with gut-wrenching sobs. I looked around blindly and search for the others, convinced they had finally come. But they weren’t the ones screaming.

I was.

I shot up out of bed and fell to the floor in a heap of blankets, struggling my way out of the mess and ignoring the sharp painful protest of my wrists. I sat up on the floor and pressed my back against the cold wall, my chest heaving as I greedily gulped down all of the air the room had to offer. For a moment I was worried I’d disturbed the rest of my comrades. But then as my mind slowly came to, I looked around and realized that there was no one for me to wake up. 

I was alone now.

I had blacked out after Armin died, welcoming whatever death they wanted to give me and praying it would happen before I could wake up. But that death never came. Squad Levi had shown up before they could do anything to me, but it was too late for Armin. When they reached him his body was ice cold and there was no way to pump life back into those veins. He was gone.

When I came to, the others were kind enough to leave me alone. They didn’t ask any questions as they untied us both, and I couldn’t have answered them even if they did. The most I could do was stare straight ahead and ignore the thoughts that were attempting to consume me. I didn’t dare look in their direction because I knew what I would find. Mikasa was carrying Armin’s body and even though she was trying to be strong, I could hear the tears in her throat. She never once tried to look at me, and I didn’t know if she blamed me.

But I knew Eren did.

_“It should have been you!” Eren screamed. His bright green eyes were filled with rage as he crossed the room towards me, his fist raised._

_I didn’t even try to fight back this time._

_“You should have died! They should have killed you!” Eren’s voice was rough with anguish as his fists swung with the vain hope of finding me. His eyes were clouded with tears and I knew he had no hope of seeing me, but I wasn’t going to duck. Every part of me was sure I deserved this pain._

_“No! Mikasa, let go!”_

_“Eren, it’s not his fault! He didn’t—”_

_“No!” Eren bellowed, struggling against her, “He was there. He could have stopped them. He let him die, Mikasa!”_

_“There was nothing he could do, Eren.”_

_“He could have died instead,” Eren growled, still trying to fight out of Mikasa’s steel like grip. “It should have been him. Armin didn’t deserve that. It should have been—”_

“Me.” I whispered the word into the empty room and shut my eyes, hanging my head. 

I left after that night because I knew none of them could stand the sight of me. I was the reminder that he was no longer there. Even I couldn’t stand to see my own reflection. I wasn’t sure who was staring back anymore, but I knew it wasn’t me. Those dead eyes couldn’t be mine. That unending hopelessness was never my expression, so why was it all I could see now?

I stood up from the floor and walked across the little room to the table that still had a light glowing on it. I must not have slept for very long because the candle was still going strong. Not that it was necessary with this amount of moonlight, but the soft yellow glow was somehow comforting. I took a seat at the table and, with trembling hands, slid over the small piece of paper that I had kept with me since the day I had lost him.

Marco.

I had lost two people now but even with Armin’s horrific death, nothing would ever compare to losing Marco. I would never forget standing over a body that I couldn’t even convince myself was him, but knowing that it was. I would never get him back no matter what I did, and I would never have the comfort of knowing how he died. All I knew was that he had died alone and terrified, and without me there to see his last moments. 

“Wait for me…” I murmured softly, tracing the words on the sheet of paper. That was what he wrote for me. He wanted me to wait for him. 

But there was no waiting now.

The paper had been tucked into the pocket of his jacket, and I pulled it out to find my name scrawled across the back. Reading that note broke me to the point that I was certain I would die right there with him, but at the same time it gave me hope. It was a stupid hope, of course. One that had grown more and more with every titan shifter we discovered. 

Marco, a titan shifter. I had to laugh at it now, but the thought had kept me going at one point. I’d managed to convince myself that it was actually a possibility, and when I learned that Annie had taken Marco’s gear I saw an opening. I hoped beyond hope that maybe she knew where he was. That maybe he’d been working with them all this time. And maybe that made him a traitor, but even if he was I would gladly follow him. I had reached the point in my life where he was the only thing that mattered.

But Annie was gone now, out of my reach and taking any answers she had with her. Even the others couldn’t tell me anything now. They would probably laugh at me if I asked, because why would he be one of them? Where was he now if he had that ability? Why hadn’t we seen him again if he could heal so easily? I had no answers to any of those questions, and I’d finally come to realize it was because there were no answers to be had. 

Marco was dead. End of story. 

And soon I would be, too.

I dropped the note back onto the table and let my hand close around the small vial waiting there. I had purchased with what little I had left, knowing it wouldn’t take much to get the job done. Poison wasn’t difficult to come across in this town. Most of the people capable of creating it were starved to the point that they didn’t care what I did with it. Whether I killed a hundred soldiers or myself, it didn’t matter so long as they had some food in their stomachs at the end of the day. 

Their hunger had been my easy ticket out.

I slowly turned the cap and let the small circle roll off onto the table. I stood up and made my way over to the window, wanting my last sight to be something other than the dingy little room behind me. I stared up at the moon, knowing that it would have to do. It wasn’t Armin or Marco, but I couldn’t have either of them now. I had lost them both, and with them I had finally lost my will to fight. As much as I wanted to go on for them, I couldn’t struggle anymore. I couldn’t breathe another day in this world without them.

“I’m so sorry, Marco,” I whispered through a broken sob, my voice strained by the tears that were gathering in my eyes. The moon was starting to blur. “I’m just so tired. I can’t wait anymore.”

I pressed the vial against my lips and tilted my head back, letting the poison slip through. It was bitter.

“Jean, what are you…”

I spun around at the sound of the voice and felt my legs give out as the poison took control of my muscles. Marco’s eyes widened as he lunged forward, his strong arms circling around my waist as he brought us both to the floor. I stared up into the eyes I had longed to see, wondering how quickly the poison managed to kill me. But if it had, why were we still in this room?

“What did you just do,” Marco breathed, his voice rising quickly with panic, “Jean, oh god, what did you do?”

No.

No, it couldn’t be possible. It wasn’t possible for fate to be this cruel. I had to be seeing him because my mind wanted it badly enough. It was just blessing me with his face one last time before I died. 

But why did his arms feel so real?

“Antidote,” Marco gasped, his eyes searching the room with a desperation that terrified me down into my very core. 

No. No.

“Jean, tell me there’s an antidote,” Marco demanded, his eyes focusing back on my face. Pain took over his features and a strangled sound choked in his throat, “Oh god, Jean, you’re lips are turning blue.”

I opened my mouth convulsively, but I couldn’t get the words to come out. My tongue wouldn’t move and my throat was giving up. All I could do was stare into his eyes. The eyes I had been praying to see when I finally woke up in the heavens, and now they wouldn’t be there waiting for me. 

Because I didn’t wait for him.

My eyelids were heavy.

“Jean, no! Please, please no,” Marco cried out, shaking my shoulders as sobs started to distort his words. “You can’t leave me like this. Don’t do this to me. Jean. Please, Jean!”

I couldn’t keep them up anymore. So much time spent fighting, and I couldn’t even manage to keep my eyes open.

“Jean, open your eyes,” Marco sobbed, pressing his forehead against mine. His tears were wet against my cheeks. “Please, just open your eyes. Don’t let them close. Don’t let them take you from me.”

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t open my eyes, and I knew I couldn’t stay. I’d been given the chance to see the one face I wanted to see before I died, and now I might never see him again. He wouldn’t be there waiting for me. I was going to be alone. 

“No! Oh god, no, Jean! Please, Jean, no!” Marco’s voice was broken beyond recognition, but somehow I could hear his voice clear as day. “Don’t make me live without you! I can’t live without you Jean!”

And I could never live without you.

I wanted him to hear those words almost as much as I wanted to stay. And in the cruelest part of my mind, I convinced myself that I was able to say them. That he heard me, and I woke up. That I opened my eyes and he was still there, holding me in his arms. I convinced myself that he told me about a life beyond the walls, and that I went to join him in it. In those few short moments, I convinced myself that I had lived the life I always wanted, and died an old man with him by my side.

“Jean, I love you.”

Somewhere in the distance I could still hear him screaming my name, but I couldn’t feel his arms anymore. My body was weightless and it was carrying me away. Away from him.

And everything I ever wanted.


End file.
